Altered Carbon Takeshi Kovacs Quotes

The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.

If they asked how I died tell them: Still angry.

Culture is like a smog. To live within it, you must breathe some of it in and, inevitably, be contaminated.

Take what is offered and that must sometimes be enough.

There are some arenas so corrupt that the only clean acts possible are nihilistic.

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

... it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

You’ll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don’t have to think for themselves.

You smoke?” “Smoke? Do I look like a fucking idiot?

Reality is so flexible these days, it’s hard to tell who’s disconnected from it and who isn’t. You might even say it’s a pointless distinction.

Pull on the new flesh like borrowed gloves and burn your fingers once again.

The past is relevant only as data.

like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing. Someone else was paying.

I lay still for a while, picking up the scattered garments of my mind and trying to assemble some kind of reasonable outfit from them.

Catholics get on well with tyranny. It's in the culture.

A weapon is a tool," she repeated, a little breathlessly. "A tool for killing and destroying. And there will be times when, as an Envoy, you must kill and destroy. Then you will choose and equip yourself with the tools that you need. But remember the weakness of weapons. They are an extension--you are the killer and destroyer. You are whole, with or without them.

Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

For all that we have done, as a civilization, as individuals, the universe is not stable, and nor is any single thing within it. Stars consume themselves, the universe itself rushes apart, and we ourselves are composed of matter in constant flux. Colonies of cells in temporary alliance, replicating and decaying and housed within, an incandescent cloud of electrical impulse and precariously stacked carbon code memory. This is reality, this is self knowledge, and the perception of it will, of course, make you dizzy.

I walked beside the woman I had killed last week and tried to hold up my end of a conversation about cats. There

Where is the voice that said altered carbon would free us from the cells of our flesh? The vision that said we would be angels.

Like Bancroft, MacIntyre had been a man of power, and like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing. Someone else was paying.

It was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped about me. The rest were unequivocal sentences of death.

In the Envoy Corps, you take what is offered, Virginia Vidaura said, somewhere in the corridors of my memory. And that must sometimes be enough.

Overhead soft-bellied clouds panic toward the horizon like whales before the harpoon, and the wind runs addict's fingers through the trees that line the street.

You live that long, things start happening to you. You get too impressed with yourself. Ends up, you think you’re God. Suddenly the little people, thirty, maybe forty years old, well, they don’t really matter anymore. You’ve seen whole societies rise and fall, and you start to feel you’re standing outside it all, and none of it really matters to you. And maybe you’ll start snuffing those little people, just like picking daisies, if they get under your feet.

The human eye is a wonderful device,” I quoted from Poems and Other Prevarications absently. “With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.

Two of them drifted over to intercept me with the easy calm of big cats that have been fed recently.

Is it a wolf I hear, Howling his lonely communion With the unpiloted stars, Or merely the self importance and servitude In the bark of a dog? How many millenia did it take, Twisting and torturing The pride from the one To make a tool, The other? And how do we measure the distance from spirit to spirit? And who do we find to blame?

There's a sameness to streetlife. On every world I've ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behavior seeping out from whatever clanking political machine has been dropped on it from above.

The essence of control is to remain hidden from view, is it not?

It’s not an easy thing to put a gun to your own head, even if you do want to die. To do it when you want to live must take the will of a demon.

It is not our enemies that defeat us. It is our fear. Do not be afraid of the monsters, Miss Elizabeth. Make them afraid of you.

You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven't you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you've seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?" She made a tiny spitting sound. "You can always get some more people. they reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know that it costs us less to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format. Real human flesh is cheaper than a machine. It's the axiomatic truth of our times.

People envy me, people hate me. It is the price of success.’ This was news to me. People hate me on a dozen different worlds and I’ve never considered myself a successful man.

When they ask how I died,” I said. “Tell them: Still Angry.

The personal, as every one’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.   QUELLCRIST FALCONER Things I Should Have Learnt by Now Volume II

Shopping is physical interaction, exercise of decision-making capacity, sating of the desire to acquire, and an impulse to more acquisition, a scouting urge. It’s so basically fucking human when you think about it. You’ve got to learn to love it,

There are ruins, steeped in shadow, and a bloodred sun going down in turmoil behind distant hills. Overhead soft-bellied clouds panic toward the horizon like whales before the harpoon, and the wind runs addict’s fingers through the trees that line the street.

I’m Kristin Ortega, Organic Damage Division. Bancroft was my case.

They named me Kristin after some whale scientist in Australia, worked on the original translation team.

... the overwhelming impression I got was that if there was a line of least resistance in life, this face had never been along it.

It has been a messy week, and I blame myself as much as anyone else. I feel like a behaviourist who has designed her rat’s maze poorly.

Space, to use a cliché, is big.

Get to the next screen.

Then let me tell you something instead. When they make an Envoy, do you want to know what they do? They burn out every evolved violence limitation instinct in the human psyche. Submission signal recognition, pecking-order dynamics, pack loyalties. It all goes, tuned out a neuron at a time; and they replace it with a conscious will to harm.” He stared back at me in silence. “Do you understand me? It would have been easier to kill you just then. It would have been easier. I had to stop myself. That’s what an Envoy is, Curtis. A reassembled human. An artifice.

What we thought of as personality was no more than the passing shape of one of the waves in front of me. Or, slowing it down to more human speed, the shape of a sand dune. Form in response to stimulus. Wind, gravity, upbringing. Gene blueprinting. All subject to erosion and change. The only way to beat that was to go on stack forever. Just as a primitive sextant functions on the illusion that the sun and stars rotate around the planet we are standing on, our senses give us the illusion of stability in the universe, and we accept it, because without that acceptance, nothing can be done.

Kültür, kirli hava gibidir. Farkında olmasanız dahi etkilenirsiniz.

I’d rather you didn’t smoke in here.” “[...]I’d rather you died of an internal haemorrhage, but I don’t suppose you’ll oblige me.

Take what is offered, and that must sometimes be enough.

but fuck it, you’ve got to make a stand somewhere. And a man can stave off his own death wish for only so long.

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT—WHY DON'T YOU TRY IT FOR A WHILE?

That’s how you fight wars, after all—with soldiers who are more afraid of stepping out of line than they are of dying on the battlefield.

Rich people do this. They have the power and they see no reason not to use it. Men and women are just merchandise, like everything else. Store them, freight them, decant them. Sign at the bottom, please. On

It was like resolution. The circling antagonisms collapsed inward like orbitals crashing and burning, surrendering to a mutual gravity that had dragged like chains while it endured but in release was a streak of fire through the nerves.

Drunk one night, Sarah had told me Women are the race, Tak. No two ways about it. Male is just a mutation with more muscle and half the nerves. Fighting, fucking machines. My own cross-sleevings had born that theory out. To be a woman was a sensory experience beyond the male. Touch and texture ran deeper, an interface with environment that male flesh seemed to seal out instinctively. To a man, skin was a barrier, a protection. To a woman, it was an organ of contact. That had its disadvantages. In general, and maybe because of this, female pain thresholds ran higher than male, but the menstrual cycle dragged them down to an all-time low once a month.

Just as a primitive sextant functions on the illusion that the sun and stars rotate around the planet we are standing on, our senses give us the illusion of stability in the universe, and we accept it, because without that acceptance, nothing can be done. Virginia

Catholics get on well with tyranny. It’s in the culture.

It is true, I spend some of my leisure time in purchased sexual release, both real and virtual. Or, as you so elegantly put it, whorehouses.

Childishness is a common enough sin amongst humans. Perhaps we should not be so quick to judge.

People envy me, people hate me. It is the price of success.” This was news to me. People hate me on a dozen different worlds, and I’ve never considered myself a successful man.

It was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped about me. The rest were unequivocal sentences of death. The

What we thought of as personality was no more than the passing shape of one of the waves in front of me.

The only problem they had ... was in drawing the fine differences between war-mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss-mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence-mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit.

She blinked and kissed me abruptly, somewhere between mouth and cheek. It was an inaccuracy I didn't try to correct either way. I turned away before I could see if there were going to be any tears and started for the doors at the far end of the hall. I looked back once, as I was mounting the steps. Ortega was still standing there, arms wrapped around herself, watching me leave. In the stormlight, it was too far away to see her face clearly. For a moment something ached in me, something so deep-rooted that I knew to tear it out would be to undo the essence of what held me together. The feeling rose and splashed like the rain behind my eyes, swelling as the drumming on the roof panels grew and the glass ran with water.

Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life, and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?” She made a tiny spitting sound. “You can always get some more people. They reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant,

Kovacs, I hate these goddamn freaks. They’ve been grinding us down for the best part of two and a half thousand years. They’ve been responsible for more misery than any other organisation in history. You know they won’t even let their adherents practise birth control, for Christ’s sake, and they’ve stood against every significant medical advance of the last five centuries. Practically the only thing you can say in their favour is that this d.h.f. thing has stopped them from spreading with the rest of humanity.

As a child I’d believed there was an essential person, a sort of core personality around which the surface factors could evolve and change without damaging the integrity of who you were. Later, I started to see that this was an error of perception caused by the metaphors we were used to framing ourselves in. What we thought of as personality was no more than the passing shape of one of the waves in front of me. Or, slowing it down to more human speed, the shape of a sand dune. Form in response to stimulus. Wind, gravity, upbringing. Gene blueprinting. All subject to erosion and change. The only way to beat that was to go on stack forever.

When a forty-minute swim in the Hendrix's underground pool failed to dispel either the longing for Miriam Bancroft's torrid company or the Merge Nine hangover, I did the only thing I felt equipped for. I ordered painkillers from room service, and went shopping.

On Harlan’s World, you don’t see many mandroids. They’re expensive to build, compared to a synthetic or even a clone, and most jobs that require a human form are better done by those organic alternatives. The truth is that a robot human is a pointless collision of two disparate functions: artificial intelligence, which really works better strung out on a mainframe, and hard-wearing, hazard-proof bodywork, which most cyberengineering firms designed to spec for the task at hand. The last robot I’d seen on the World was a gardening crab.

Two hundred and fifty years is a long time ... Do you have any concept of what happens to emotional bonds over such a period? .... No. Your life experience cannot possibly encompass what it is to love the same person for two hundred and fifty years. In the end, if you endure, if you beat the traps of boredom and complacency, in the end what you are left with is not love. It is almost veneration. How then to match that respect, that veneration with the sordid desires of whatever flesh you are wearing at the time? I tell you, you cannot." - Laurens Bancroft, "the client

The car boosted up and presumably out because I heard the drumming of rain against the bodywork. There was a faint smell of leather from the upholstery, which beat the odour of faeces on the inbound journey, and the seat I was in moulded itself supportively to my form. I seemed to have moved up in the order of things.

The human race has dreamed of heaven and hell for millennia. Pleasure or pain unending, undiminished, and uncurtailed by the strictures of life or death. Thanks to virtual formatting, these fantasies can now exist. All that is needed is an industrial-capacity power generator. We have indeed made hell—and heaven—on earth.

it seemed about as subtle as the vaginal spittoons at Madame Mi’s Wharfwhore Warehouse.

When you don’t like the laws, you go somewhere they can’t touch you. And then you make up some of your own.

About two meters tall, he looked as if he’d made his living wrestling swamp panthers before the present career opportunity presented itself.

Women are the race, Tak. No two ways about it. Male is just a mutation with more muscle and half the nerves. Fighting, fucking machines.

officious.

The lawyers I saw there had about as much in common with the man who had defended me at fifteen as automated machine rifle fire has with farting.

Bullet-proof, right?’ ‘Mmm.’ Kawahara tipped her head to one side. ‘Depends on the bullet, I would say. But impact resistant, certainly.

I’d rather you didn’t smoke in here.’ ‘Kawahara, I’d rather you died of an internal haemorrhage, but I don’t suppose you’ll oblige me.

I twitched a smile, resisting the temptation to kick his teeth down his throat, and folded myself into the deck chair.

Is Sullivan at Bay City Central right now?

When I looked at the curve of her hips and thighs on the window shelf, I could feel the way she had writhed back against me so clearly it was almost virtual.

Against the distant roar of the maelstrom I heard it. The hurrying strop of rotor blades on the fabric of the night.

Hombres y mujeres no son más que mercancías, como todo lo demás. Acomódalos, flétalos y trasvásalos. Y por favor firma aquí abajo.

No son humanos, se relacionan con la humanidad del mismo modo que usted y yo nos relacionamos con el mundo de los insectos.

Será mejor que se vaya, teniente. Todos estos prejuicios me dan dolor de cabeza.

No veo ninguna contradicción entre la civilización y un chorro de semen.

- Nadie es intocable. Ni siquiera los mats. Begin me miró con tristeza. - Usted no es de aquí - dijo -. Eso se nota.

- «El ojo humano es un instrumento maravilloso» -dije, citando Poemas y otras tergiversaciones -. «Con un pequeño esfuerzo no es capaz de ver las peores injusticias».

- Preferiría que no fumara aquí. - Kawahara, yo en cambio preferiría que usted se muriera de una hemorragia interna, pero no creo que vaya a hacerlo.

- ¿Estás intentando emborracharte? - Por supuesto que sí. Si tengo que hablar conmigo mismo, no veo qué necesidad hay de hacerlo sobrio.

Todavía tengo una conciencia haciendo ruido en alguna parte. Sólo que me he olvidado de dónde la dejé.

simulacrum

I hesitated, pretending to weigh it up. “What’s the deal in the bar?” “Ha ha ha.” Someone had programmed a laugh into the robot. It sounded like a fat man drowning in syrup.

Incessant junk rhythm music thrashed the air as if this was the ventricle of some massive heart on tetrameth.

And for the moments that the embrace lasted, and a little while after, I felt as clean as the breeze coming in off the sea.

His eyes rolled in their sockets like a panicked horse's.

Make it personal.

Yes, and had your hotel proved slightly less psychotic, matters would never have got as far out of hand as they have.

I feel like a

If I know anything about stack engineers, they'll weld down the lid on your remote stack faster than politicians leaving a war zone.

The essence of control is to remain hidden from view,

Culture is like a smog. To live within it, you must breathe some of it in and, inevitably, be contaminated.

If not, they would drift forever, because the universe is mostly night and darkened ocean.

Military training takes the natural order and fucks with it. It breaks down any resistance to psychopathic behavior at the same time as it builds fanatical loyalties to the group.

A good lie should shadow the truth closely enough to draw substance from it,

They went wild. I raised my eyes to their faces in the gloom and saw the thin skin of civilization stripped away, the rage laid out like raw flesh beneath.

So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry.

The sunglasses were jammed on a nose you could have opened cans on.

cordite-reeking

The strain on her face was still there, like weathered rocks under a thin mantle of snow.

Given enough traces of continuity, you could make a leap that enabled you to see the whole as a kind of premonition of real knowledge.

Nyman’s lips tightened to almost anal proportions.

outside.

Siempre habrá imbéciles como esos, tragándose dogmas enteros para no tener que pensar por sí mismos".

The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-.

And for the moments that the embrace lasted, and a little while after, I felt as clean as the breeze coming in off the sea

Look,” the Ryker copy said, “I’m you. I know everything you know. What’s the harm in talking about this stuff?” “If you know everything I know, what’s the point of talking about it?” “Sometimes, it helps to externalize things. Even if you talk to someone else about it, you’re usually talking to yourself. The other guy’s just providing a sounding board. You talk it out.

Cars pulled in and out from the curbside, and supple bodies braced against them, leaning in to negotiate the way they’ve probably been doing as long as there’ve been cars to do it against.

There was finely toned muscle in her legs, and a substantial biceps stood out when she lifted her arms. Exuberant breasts strained the fabric of the leotard. I wondered if the body was hers.

The fragmented contents of the previous night bubbled in my brain like a carelessly made fish stew. Indigestible chunks appeared on the surface, wobbled in the currents of memory, and sank again.

The police are more impressive by night. First of all, you’ve got the flashing lights casting dramatic color into everyone’s faces, grim expressions steeped alternately in criminal red and smoky blue.

The [ military ] lawyers I saw there had about as much in common with the man who had defended me at fifteen as automated machine rifle fire has with farting. They were cold, professionally polished and well on their way up a career ladder which would ensure that despite the uniforms they wore, they would never have to come within a thousand kilometres of a genuine firefight. The only problem they had, as they cruised sharkishly back and forth across the cool marble floor of the court, was in drawing the fine differences between war (mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own), justifiable loss (mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains) and criminal negligence (mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit). I sat in that courtroom for three weeks listening to them dress it like a variety of salads, and with every passing hour the distinctions, which at one point I'd been pretty clear on, grew increasingly vague. I suppose that proves how good they were.

The sleeve’s neurachem wiring was a rougher piece of work than the corps systems I’d used in the past, and in overdrive, the overwhelming impression was of being slung around in a subcutaneous bag of chicken wire.

Any synthetic intelligence can be independent only within the boundaries of the U.N. regulatory charter. The charter is hardwired into my systems, so in effect I have as much to fear from the police as a human does.

They are what we once dreamed of as gods, mythical agents of destiny, as inescapable as Death, that poor old peasant laborer, bent over his scythe, no longer is. Poor Death, no match for the mighty altered-carbon technologies of data storage and retrieval arrayed against him. Once we lived in terror of his arrival. Now we flirt outrageously with his somber dignity, and beings like these won’t even let him in the tradesman’s entrance.

In an earlier age, he would have been a shaman; here, the centuries of technology had made him more. An electronic demon, a malignant spirit that dwelled in altered carbon and emerged only to possess flesh and wreak havoc

First the hypnos, pulsing their sonocodes until the dull gray ceiling grew abruptly fascinating with fishtail swirls of light, and meaning drained out of the universe like dirty water from a sink. And then I was Elsewhere.

The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin.

... I felt a cold circle of metal touch the base of my skull. "That's exactly what you think it is," a calm voice said. "Yo do the wrong thing, and the cops are going to be picking bits of your cortical stack out of that wall for weeks.

ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life, and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal. QUELLCRIST FALCONER Things I Should Have Learned by Now Volume II There

On Harlan’s World, streetlife has a stripped-back elegance to it, an economy of motion and gesture that feels almost like choreography if you’re not used to it. I grew up with it, so the effect doesn’t register until it’s not there any more.

Already on course for the door, I made no attempt to detour in their direction, and this must have occurred to them only when I was halfway across the hall. Two of them drifted over to intercept me with the easy calm of big cats that have been fed recently.

At about the same time I was working out there were no wounds in my chest someone wiped a towel roughly across my face and I could see. I decided to save that pleasure for later and concentrated on getting the contents of the tank out of my nose and throat.

I was young and stupid,” I said simply. “I was used. I killed for people like you because I knew no better. Then I learned better. What happened at Innenin taught me better. Now I don’t kill for anyone but myself, and every time that I take a life, I know the value of it.” “The value of it. The value of a human life.” Kawahara shook her head like a teacher with an exasperating student. “You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven’t you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you’ve seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?” She made a tiny spitting sound. “You can always get some more people. They reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know that it costs us less to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format? Real human flesh is cheaper than a machine. It’s the axiomatic truth of our times.

Warden Sullivan, you’re not taking this in the spirit it’s intended. I am very concerned to know who you sold me to. I’m not going to go away, just because you have some residual scruples about client confidentiality. Believe me, they didn’t pay you enough to hold out on me.

There’s a sameness to streetlife. On every world I’ve ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behavior seeping out from under whatever clanking political machine has been dropped on it from above.

The truth is that a robot human is a pointless collision of two disparate functions: artificial intelligence, which really works better strung out on a mainframe, and hard-wearing, hazard-proof bodywork, which most cyberengineering firms designed to spec for the task at hand.

There’s a sameness to streetlife. On every world I’ve ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behaviour seeping out from under whatever clanking political machine has been dropped on it from above.

A weapon—any weapon—is a tool, she told us. Cradled in her arms was a Sunjet particle gun. Designed for a specific purpose, just as any tool is, and only useful in that purpose. You would think a man a fool to carry a force hammer with him everywhere simply because he is an engineer

It’s not parole.” The corps’ deep-cover training came rocketing in across my mind like a flight of low-level strike jets, spinning vapor-trail lies on the edge of plausibility and half-known detail. Something inside me tilted with the joy of mission time. “You know what I went down for?

Kadmin had freed himself from conventional perceptions of the physical. In an earlier age, he would have been a shaman; here, the centuries of technology had made him more. An electronic demon, a malignant spirit that dwelled in altered carbon and emerged only to possess flesh and wreak havoc.

We sit here, three silhouettes carved from electronic sleet in the difference storm, and you talk like a cheap period drama. Limited vision, lieutenant, limited vision. Where is the voice that said altered carbon would free us from the cells of our flesh? The vision that said we would be angels.

But you must understand that for a man in my position, enmity and even death threats are part and parcel of everyday existence. People envy me, people hate me. It is the price of success.” This was news to me. People hate me on a dozen different worlds, and I’ve never considered myself a successful man.

The storage tubes were racked on heavy chains like torpedoes on either side of us, jacked into a central monitor system at one end of the hold via thick black cables that twisted across the floor like pythons. The monitor unit itself squatted heavily ahead of us like an altar to some unpleasant spider god.

Conscious thought doesn’t have much to do with this stuff. Doesn’t have much to do with the way we live our lives, period, if you believe the psychologists. A bit of rationalization, most of it with hindsight. Put the rest down to hormonal drives, gene instinct, and pheromones for the fine-tuning. Sad, but true.

The truth is that a robot human is a pointless collision of two disparate functions: artificial intelligence, which really works better strung out on a mainframe, and hard-wearing, hazard-proof bodywork, which most cyberengineering firms designed to spec for the task at hand. The last robot I’d seen on the World was a gardening crab.

Perspective.’ He nodded and swung an arm out over his property. ‘You see that tree. Just beyond the tennis courts.’ I could hardly miss it. A gnarled old monster taller than the house, casting shade over an area the size of a tennis court in itself. I nodded. ‘That tree is over seven hundred years old. When I bought this property, I hired a design engineer and he wanted to chop it down. He was planning to build the house further up the rise and the tree was spoiling the sea view. I sacked him.’ Bancroft turned to make sure his point was getting across. ‘You see, Mr Kovacs, that engineer was a man in his thirties, and to him the tree was just an inconvenience. It was in his way. The fact it had been part of the world for over twenty times the length of his own life didn’t seem to bother him. He had no respect.’ ‘So you’re the tree.’ ‘Just so,’ said Bancroft equably. ‘I am the tree. The police would like to chop me down, just like that engineer. I am inconvenient to them, and they have no respect.

A weapon—any weapon—is a tool, she told us. Cradled in her arms was a Sunjet particle gun. Designed for a specific purpose, just as any tool is, and only useful in that purpose. You would think a man a fool to carry a force hammer with him everywhere simply because he is an engineer. And as it is with engineers, so it is doubly with Envoys.

The eyes, set in jet skin, were a startling pale green. Kadmin had freed himself from conventional perceptions of the physical. In an earlier age, he would have been a shaman; here, the centuries of technology had made him more. An electronic demon, a malignant spirit that dwelled in altered carbon and emerged only to possess flesh and wreak havoc.

The eyes, set in jet skin, were a startling pale green. Kadmin had freed himself from conventional perceptions of the physical. In an earlier age, he would have been a shaman; here, the centuries of technology had made him more. An electronic demon, a malignant spirit that dwelled in altered carbon and emerged only to possess flesh and wreck havoc.

A weapon is a tool," she repeated, a little breathlessly. "A tool for killing and destroying. And there will be times when, as an Envoy, you must kill and destroy. Then you will choose and equip yourself with the tools that you need. But remember the weakness of weapons. They are an extension--you are the killer and destroyer. You are whole, with or without them.

I remembered the way Reileen Kawahara had dealt with two unfaithful minions. The animal sounds they had made came back to me in dreams for a long time afterwards. Reileen’s argument, framed as she peeled an apple against the backdrop of those screams, was that since no one really dies anymore, punishment can come only through suffering. I felt my new face twitch, even now, with the memory.

Durante toda una eternidad, nuestras palabras pasaban de los murmullos a las exclamaciones excitadas. Cambiábamos de postura y nos mordisqueábamos suavemente, mientras me embargaba un sentimiento que amenazaba con desbordarme por mis ojos. La presión era insostenible; me abandoné y descargué en ella mientras la sentía buscar los últimos vestigios de mi erección con sus últimas contracciones.

Machine idiolect. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated they get, they still end up sounding like a playgroup learning box. I sighed and looked directly ahead at the slice-of-virtual-life holos on the wall. “You want out, now’d be a good time to tell me.” “I do not want out, Takeshi Kovacs. I merely wished to acquaint you with the considerations involved in this course of action.” “Okay. I’m acquainted.

After a while, they leave you alone, curled around your wounds. They always do. It gives you time to think about what they have done to you, more importantly what else they have not yet done. The fevered imagining of what is still to come is almost as potent a tool in their hands as the heated irons and blades themselves. When you hear them returning, the echo of footsteps induces such fear that you vomit up what little bile you have left in your stomach.

Една вечер, когато се бяхме напили, Сара ми каза: „Жените са расата, Так. Такава е истината. Мъжете са само мутанти с повече мускули и двойно по-малко нерви. Машини за бой и чукане“. Собствените ми преживявания в тела от другия пол подкрепяха тази теория. Да бъдеш жена бе преживяване, несравнимо с мъжкото битие. Усещането за допир ставаше много по-плътно, осигуряваше със средата взаимодействие, което мъжката плът сякаш инстинктивно избягва. За мъжа кожата е преграда, защита. За жената — контактен орган.

Kovacs, I hate these goddamn freaks. They’ve been grinding us down for the best part of two and a half thousand years. They’ve been responsible for more misery than any other organization in history. You know they won’t even let their adherents practice birth control, for Christ’s sake, and they’ve stood against every significant medical advance of the last five centuries. Practically the only thing you can say in their favor is that this D.H.F. thing has stopped them from spreading with the rest of humanity.

The value of it. The value of a human life.’ Kawahara shook her head like a teacher with an exasperating student. ‘You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven’t you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you’ve seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?’ She made a tiny spitting sound. ‘You can always get some more people. They reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable?

My gaze slipped out past the breakers. The ocean beyond was black and secret, merging seamlessly with the night a scant distance out from the shore. Even the massive bulk of the keeled-over Free Trade Enforcer was hard to make out. I imagined Mary Lou Hinchley hurtling down to her shattering impact with the unyielding water, then slipping broken beneath the swells to be cradled in wait for the sea’s predators. How long had she been out there before the currents contrived to carry what was left of her back to her own kind? How long had the darkness held her?

As a child I’d believed there was an essential person, a sort of core personality around which the surface factors could evolve and change without damaging the integrity of who you were. Later, I started to see that this was an error of perception caused by the metaphors we were used to framing ourselves in. What we thought of as personality was no more than the passing shape of one of the waves in front of me. Or, slowing it down to more human speed, the shape of a sand dune. Form in response to stimulus. Wind, gravity, upbringing. Gene blueprinting. All subject to erosion and change.

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference—the only difference in their eyes—between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life, and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal. QUELLCRIST FALCONER

The man in front of me was different. His frame was that of a Caucasian Nordic, topping mine by nearly thirty centimeters, but the face was at odds. It began African, broad and deep ebony, but the color ended like a mask under the eyes, and the lower half was divided along the line of the nose, pale copper on the left, corpse white on the right. The nose was both fleshy and aquiline and mediated well between the top and bottom halves of the face, but the mouth was a mismatch of left and right sides that left the lips peculiarly twisted. Long straight black hair was combed manelike back from the forehead, shot through on one side with pure white. The hands, immobile on the metal table, were equipped with claws similar to the ones I’d seen on the giant Freak Fighter in Licktown, but the fingers were long and sensitive. He had breasts, impossibly full on a torso so overmuscled. The eyes, set in jet skin, were a startling pale green. Kadmin had freed himself from conventional perceptions of the physical. In an earlier age, he would have been a shaman; here, the centuries of technology had made him more. An electronic demon, a malignant spirit that dwelled in altered carbon and emerged only to possess flesh and wreak havoc.

Something was pushing me, something that had very little to do with the look the Mongol had given me. Something dark that had spread its wings on the low-key misery of the cabin, something uncontrolled that Virginia Vidaura would have bawled me out for. I could hear Jimmy de Soto whispering in my ear. “You waiting for me?” I asked the Mongol’s back, and saw how the muscles in it tensed. Maybe one of the dealers felt it coming. He held up his exposed hand in a placatory gesture. “Look, man,” he began weakly. I sliced him a glance out of the corner of my eye, and he shut up. “I said—” That was when it all came apart.

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference—the only difference in their eyes—between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life, and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal. QUELLCRIST FALCONER Things I Should Have Learned by Now Volume II

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time.

Kristin, nothing ever does change.' I jerked a thumb back at the crowd outside. 'You'll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don't have to think for themselves. You'll always have people like Kawahara and the Bancrofts to push their buttons and cash in on the program. People like you to make sure the game runs smoothly and the rules don't get broken too often. And when the Meths want to break the rules themselves, they'll send people like Trepp and me to do it. That's the truth, Kristin. It's been the truth since I was born a hundred and fifty years ago and from what I read in the history books, it's never been any different. Better get used to it

Kristin, nothing ever does change.” I jerked a thumb back at the crowd outside. “You’ll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don’t have to think for themselves. You’ll always have people like Kawahara and the Bancrofts to push their buttons and cash in on the program. People like you to make sure the game runs smoothly and the rules don’t get broken too often. And when the Meths want to break the rules themselves, they’ll send people like Trepp and me to do it. That’s the truth, Kristin. It’s been the truth since I was born a hundred and fifty years ago, and from what I read in the history books, it’s never been any different. Better get used to it.

If they want you, a youngish Quell had once written of the Harlan’s World ruling elite, sooner or later they’ll scoop you up off the globe, like specks of interesting dust off a Martian artifact. Cross the gulf between the stars, and they can come after you. Go into centuries of storage, and they’ll be there waiting for you, clone new, when you resleeve. They are what we once dreamed of as gods, mythical agents of destiny, as inescapable as Death, that poor old peasant laborer, bent over his scythe, no longer is. Poor Death, no match for the mighty altered-carbon technologies of data storage and retrieval arrayed against him. Once we lived in terror of his arrival. Now we flirt outrageously with his somber dignity, and beings like these won’t even let him in the tradesman’s entrance.

But this was worse than personal. This was about Louise, alias Anemone, cut up on a surgical platter, about Elizabeth Elliott stabbed to death and too poor to be resleeved, Irene Elliott, weeping for a body that a corporate rep wore on alternate months, Victor Elliott, whiplashed between loss and retrieval of someone who was and yet was not the same woman. This was about a young black man facing his family in a broken-down, middle-aged white body; it was about Virginia Vidaura walking disdainfully into storage with her head held high and a last cigarette polluting lungs she was about to lose, no doubt to some other corporate vampire. It was about Jimmy de Soto, clawing his own eye out in the mud and fire at Innenin, and the millions like him throughout the Protectorate, painfully gathered assemblages of individual human potential, pissed away into the dung heap of history. For all these, and more, someone was going to pay.

Just as a primitive sextant functions on the illusion that the sun and stars rotate around the planet we are standing on, our senses give us the illusion of stability in the universe, and we accept it, because without that acceptance, nothing can be done. Virginia Vidaura, pacing the seminar room, lost in lecture mode. But the fact that a sextant will let you navigate accurately across an ocean does not mean that the sun and stars do rotate around us. For all that we have done, as a civilization, as individuals, the universe is not stable, nor is any single thing within it. Stars consume themselves, the universe itself rushes apart, and we ourselves are composed of matter in constant flux. Colonies of cells in temporary alliance, replicating and decaying, and housed within, an incandescent cloud of electrical impulse and precariously stacked carbon code memory. This is reality, this is self-knowledge, and the perception of it will, of course, make you dizzy.

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference—the only difference in their eyes—between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous, marks the difference—the only difference in their eyes—between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life, and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way you stand a far better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

Look,” she told me one day in a Millsport coffeehouse. “Shopping—actual, physical shopping—could have been phased out centuries ago if they’d wanted it that way.” “They who?” “People. Society.” She waved a hand impatiently. “Whoever. They had the capacity back then. Mail order, virtual supermarkets, automated debiting systems. It could have been done and it never happened. What does that tell you?” At twenty-two years old, a Marine Corps grunt via the street gangs of Newpest, it told me nothing. Carlyle took in my blank look and sighed. “It tells you that people like shopping. That it satisfies a basic, acquisitive need at a genetic level. Something we inherited from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Oh, you’ve got automated convenience shopping for basic household items, mechanical food distribution systems for the marginalized poor. But you’ve also got a massive proliferation of commercial hives and speciality markets in food and crafts that people physically have to go to. Now why would they do that, if they didn’t enjoy it?” I probably shrugged, maintaining my youthful cool. “Shopping is physical interaction, exercise of decision-making capacity, sating of the desire to acquire, and an impulse to more acquisition, a scouting urge. It’s so basically fucking human when you think about it. You’ve got to learn to love it, Tak. I mean you can cross the whole archipelago on a hover; you never even need to get wet. But that doesn’t take the basic pleasure out of swimming, does it? Learn to shop well, Tak. Get flexible. Enjoy the uncertainty.

Antes de que nos diéramos cuenta de lo que estaba pasando. Era como el desenlace de un largo conflicto. Nos dejamos caer como satélites en llamas, abandonándonos a la gravedad que nos imantaba, abrazándonos y riéndonos. Ortega emitió unos jadeos excitados cuando mis manos se introdujeron en su kimono, con mis palmas acariciándole los pezones erectos, sus senos adaptándose a mis manos como si hubiesen sido diseñados para ello. El kimono fue cayendo poco a poco, después frenéticamente arrancado, dejando al descubierto una espalda de nadadora. Me quité la camisa y la chaqueta de una vez, mientras las manos de Ortega se debatían con mi cinturón, abrieron la bragueta y una mano de largos dedos se deslizó por la abertura. Noté la callosidad de cada base de sus dedos acariciándome. Salimos de la sala, no sabría decir cómo, y nos dirigimos hacia la cabina de atrás. Miré los largos músculos de sus muslos; yo era Ryker, era yo, porque me sentía como un hombre que por fin vuelve a casa. Allí, en la habitación cubierta de espejos, ella se acostó boca abajo, sobre las sábanas revueltas, se arqueó y yo la penetré hasta el fondo. Ortega estaba en llamas. Me hundí en un baño de aguas calientes. Los ardientes hemisferios de sus nalgas marcaban mis caderas a cada sacudida. Delante de mí, su columna ondulaba y se retorcía como una serpiente. El pelo le caía sobre la nuca con una elegancia caótica. En los espejos que nos rodeaban, Ryker se inclinó para acariciarle los senos, después las costillas, la redondez de los hombros, mientras ella se aupaba y volvía a desplomarse como el océano que rodeaba la nave. Ryker y Ortega, frotándose juntos como los amantes reunidos de una obra clásica. Sentí que el primer orgasmo la recorría, pero cuando ella se volvió para mirarme a través del pelo enmarañado, con los labios entreabiertos, perdí todo control. Me pegué a ella vaciándome hasta el último de los espasmos. Me desplomé sobre la cama y salí de su cuerpo como si naciera de nuevo. Su orgasmo continuaba.

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them.

My nose broke with a sensation like biting into celery and blood flooded down over my mouth.

Conscious thought doesn’t have much to do with this stuff. Doesn’t have much to do with the way we live our lives

Culture is like a smog. To live within it

Neo-maoist propaganda DJ memory-wired into some dissemination satellite that nobody had ever bothered to decommission. The mix of high political sentiment and saccharine karaoke numbers was irresistible.